suggestion: web path changes

[owenduffy]

Mouser,

We all dread needing to change the web site that hosts our update and support pages for an application.

I suggest that it would be useful if the dcupdate.xml file included in a standard way, a url for the support directory.

eg:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
<Program_Version>0.0.2</Program_Version>
<Program_Release_Day>0</Program_Release_Day>
<Program_Release_Month>0</Program_Release_Month>
<Program_Release_Year>0</Program_Release_Year>
<VersionFileRemote>http://www.mysite.net/myapp/dcupdate.xml</VersionFileRemote>
... etc
</root>

Further, that when dcUpdater reads the file and finds the 'new' entities, that it updates the application's .dcupdate file for the new url for all such entities that do not match so that dcUpdater can automatically adjust to the new site. This would be most effective if dcUpdater was launched automatically on each boot, or periodically so the new site was likely to be captured before the old site shuts down.

Do you understand what I mean?

Owen

[mouser]

can you elaborate a little more on the idea, i'm not 100% sure i follow.

[justice]

If I understand what you mean is a permanent redirect in one removeversion.xml to another on a different url, for when you change hosts.
What you can do is point to an asp/php page in the .dcupdate that redirects transparently to the xml file, in a stable location like a dcmember page. Then you'd just have to change the redirect in the future. I guess you could host the xml file there too and avoid the work

Maybe an alternative implementation mouser could add a mirror system so that if the first url is unavailable a mirror can be used, this would then work with redirects as well. The problem is of course that the redirect is in the same spot as the version info, meaning if it's unavailable you cannot redirect anymore. And releasing a software update to update the dcupdate file is a bit pointless. hmm

[mouser]

mirrors is a good idea.. and perhaps some kind of central repository where mirrors can be posted after the fact.. ie a central dcupdater home where if someones server goes offline, an admin could post a trusted mirror for the server that went down.

or put another way, if we assumed that EVERY update file has a mirror on the dcupdater server if the main authors server goes down.